kiwijam - 2015-04-12 6:02 AM
Player3 grid has 8 solutions. It has six rows of "LOOLOOLOO", and 3 rows of "CLLCLLCL?", where "?" can be C or L.

Unfortunatly for me, I was Player3, and I made the wrong choice :(
I had also the idea to send your solution (the good one) but I thought mine was easier to check, and I checked mine... too quickly.
Because of many players found the best solution last year on Roman OX, I thought the same players will find easily Roman COOL, which is a kind of transposition... And because of this transposition, I was early convinced that 1200 was the best score to reach.

Definitely, I was too lazy this time : for puzzle 10, I have the same answer than Hugo, and didn't saw your answer, which is so similar :((

Congratulations to all, and espacially to Riad for the conception and to James for his performance !

Thanks Riad for many wonderful puzzles. These were certainly very difficult and had me frustrated for many hours! With so many unique rules, it was easy to make a careless mistake early on in a puzzle, not be sure where you had erred, and have to restart. But, it was certainly fun and had me focused intently for a long time. Unfortunately ran out of time to tackle the last optimiser!

On the results: it looks like I did not receive any points for my COOL optimiser, and Christian may have been given the points in my place. Thanks again.

I saw that in your puzzle is not the only 1 solution. I noticed that if you moved down the 150 in the middle row, then the solution would be the only one. I cooked your puzzle in PDF-file with your answer. Alas, the answer was the same as in the file. I wish you good luck in the next contests!

Unfortunatly for me, I was Player3, and I made the wrong choice :(
I had also the idea to send your solution (the good one) but I thought mine was easier to check, and I checked mine... too quickly.
Because of many players found the best solution last year on Roman OX, I thought the same players will find easily Roman COOL, which is a kind of transposition... And because of this transposition, I was early convinced that 1200 was the best score to reach.

Definitely, I was too lazy this time : for puzzle 10, I have the same answer than Hugo, and didn't saw your answer, which is so similar :((

Congratulations to all, and espacially to Riad for the conception and to James for his performance !

Thank you Puzlifouk,
Your puzzle I checked the day before the end of the contest. I thought that you can still move the 150 to the right and correct the last day of the contest. But your idea really was good.
See you in September, I have already prepared a contest of new puzzles!

Thank you Riad for another great contest.
The puzzles are hard, but we have a week so that is not a problem. It is nice to sit down and solve a puzzle without time pressure.
I kept making small mistakes in the Mirrored Sudokus, I solved it on my 3rd try.

For Optimizer #10 I found 6 solutions with 9 points, and there are 2 more in the pdf. I think this was just hard to find any solution, especially in the bottom-right corner. I expected many people would find 9 points.
But I thought Optimizer #11 was the hardest. On the last day I submitted a 2225 solution, which is the best when going around the edge. Later that night I tried the "S" shape and found the 1818 solution. I thought this would be very hard for people to find, but 14 people did! Great work by all of them. This was my favourite puzzle.
For Optimizer #12 I remembered last year's Roman Ox, which I did not do well with. First I found a symmetrical "tartan" solution, with 6 clues on the top and side (150,-,150,150,-,150,150,-,150). Then I removed one clue at a time, checking for uniqueness, until only 8 clues remained. This surprised me, I thought 10 clues would be minimal. Also surprised that less people tried this.
I looked at solutions with three adjacent clues (e.g. 150,250,200) but these were too expensive for not enough information.

Well done to Tomoaki and Sergey also.
Every year I feel very lucky to win this, maybe next year my luck will finish :)

Thank you Riad for the very nice contest, fortunatly we had more than a week to solve the puzzles. All of them hard but funny and challenging to solve.
The best puzzles for me were tools and borderless ABCD. And the optimizers April contest and snake were also very funny to solve.
Congratulations to all the participants, specially to kiwijam!

Thank you Riad for another great contest.
The puzzles are hard, but we have a week so that is not a problem. It is nice to sit down and solve a puzzle without time pressure.
I kept making small mistakes in the Mirrored Sudokus, I solved it on my 3rd try.

For Optimizer #10 I found 6 solutions with 9 points, and there are 2 more in the pdf. I think this was just hard to find any solution, especially in the bottom-right corner. I expected many people would find 9 points.
But I thought Optimizer #11 was the hardest. On the last day I submitted a 2225 solution, which is the best when going around the edge. Later that night I tried the "S" shape and found the 1818 solution. I thought this would be very hard for people to find, but 14 people did! Great work by all of them. This was my favourite puzzle.
For Optimizer #12 I remembered last year's Roman Ox, which I did not do well with. First I found a symmetrical "tartan" solution, with 6 clues on the top and side (150,-,150,150,-,150,150,-,150). Then I removed one clue at a time, checking for uniqueness, until only 8 clues remained. This surprised me, I thought 10 clues would be minimal. Also surprised that less people tried this.
I looked at solutions with three adjacent clues (e.g. 150,250,200) but these were too expensive for not enough information.

Well done to Tomoaki and Sergey also.
Every year I feel very lucky to win this, maybe next year my luck will finish :)

Thank you James, your comments are always interesting and informative!
I assumed that the optimizer 10 will be easy to find the best solution. I knew that the best solution is defined in different ways. So I appreciated the best solution in 10 points, and the subsequent 7. I wanted that new players could solve several puzzles. Because I do not cut the duration of the contest, knowing full well that strong solvers enough 2-3 days.

Thank you Riad for the very nice contest, fortunatly we had more than a week to solve the puzzles. All of them hard but funny and challenging to solve.
The best puzzles for me were tools and borderless ABCD. And the optimizers April contest and snake were also very funny to solve.
Congratulations to all the participants, specially to kiwijam!

Already waiting for next year's contest!

Thank you Ibon. May contact the administrator to determine the best puzzle?
Deb, is it possible to invite participants to rank the puzzles?

Hi Riad,
You talked about a new set of puzzles in September... May we know some more ? There will be before of after Puzzle Ramayan ? At the beginning or at the end of September ?
As you can imagine, I am eager to see these puzzles...

Hi Riad,
You talked about a new set of puzzles in September... May we know some more ? There will be before of after Puzzle Ramayan ? At the beginning or at the end of September ?
As you can imagine, I am eager to see these puzzles...